Morning Glow
by alwaysflying
Summary: In a bar with an intoxicated and uncharacteristically expressive roommate, Mark wonders if irony is stalking him.


Mark has found that weekend nights are, in fact, very like every other night when one does not have a job.

In being "very like every other night," Friday and Saturday nights thus feature many, many bars, so many that they blur together even in their neon awnings and various levels of permissible intoxication before the bartender will shoo a patron out of the bar, insisting that he (or she) go home and get some sleep. Mark has been that person many, many times.

Tonight it's different.

Tonight he is not drinking alone, and it is not a Saturday. At least, he doesn't think it is. Without a job, he has no way to be sure, but Mark is vaguely certain that it is a Wednesday. That would explain the largely empty bar, save for the suit-clad Upper East Side individuals with paying jobs, snotty wives and Lower East Side girlfriends. Mark has learned from Joanne that Wednesday is the worst day of the work week, and for these individuals, "working late" means drinking, late, in a bar.

Next to Mark is not his usual company of a camera bag and apartment keys. Instead, beside him is Roger, whose green eyes sparkle naughtily with every swig he takes of liquor. Mark knows all about Roger's too-religious parents, how they would teach him that drinking was cheating on life, an unfair escape that took one out of the beauty of the real world. Roger would tell them to fuck off and leave him alone, which Mark knows terrified them.

To be honest, Roger is fine company. Of all of Mark's friends, Roger is the most serene drunk. He is contemplative and honest, open and expressive. He talks with his hands, eyes wide and alert, taking in the world from a whole new perspective. Never hesitating to say exactly what he means, a drunk Roger is an endearing Roger. Mark has long been amused by the the fact that so uncommunicative a sober indivudal is so talkative while intoxicated; however, Roger does not, nor will he ever, know exactly how he behaves while inebriated.

In the morning, after many, many drinks, all Mark will ever tell Roger is that he was thoroughly smashed. Roger will accept it and move on, drink his coffee and try to forget about it.

This evening is so unlike all the others. It is a Wednesday but feels like an I-don't-even-know-what-day-it-is day, a day with pounding rain and gray skies and some headline news about a woman whose husband pushed her out of a ninth-story window. The happy ending, that the woman was caught by a perplexed passerby, is left out of the articles; hospitalization, it says, was the result, because hospitals are underfunded and need the support of the community.

Mark personally believes that bars should receive federal support. That way, he would have drinks on the house and would not have to worry about fishing out another three bucks for every bad shot he takes. Roger is busy explaining to the bartender that "these drinks are shit, your bar is shit, I want to leave"; Mark, meanwhile, stares into his shot glass as though it holds the secrets of the universe.

A hand reaches out and snatches the glass away. "Another round?" asks the bartender. Mark nods wearily and turns to his roommate, searching for signs of sobriety. He finds none and swivels back around to face the bar. He wants to face himself, ask himself why he is drinking on a Wednesday night, why the beer at home in the fridge wasn't good enough for him.

It's bad, the beer back at home, but then, so is this. Mark prefers not the drinks here but the _environment_, the community, the cheap lights on the window and the nonexistent lighting throughout the actual bar. He likes the dull roar of people ordering "another round" and then another and another, the shrill shriek of sirens outside. This bar is far too cheap to afford a television, but everyone in the bar stares in the direction of the corner that the television _would _inhabitate anyway. Mark finds this not only ridiculous but also slightly obsessive. "Attention, shoppers," he wants to say. "Your date is _that-a-way_. Look at her instead of at the T.V. that's not even here."

Of course, it is Roger who actually says that, because he is verbal and explosive in his drunken state. In fact, he is verbal and explosive even before the shots and bottles. Roger is a bottled-up force, a shaken-up bottle with foam and fizz oozing out from the top where the cap wasn't screwed on tightly. As words escape Roger's mouth, the pressure softens and dies, allowing him to return to his state of moody contemplation. This is how he is at home. In the bar, his moods are not half as dramatic. He is merely a person, for once, thoughtful and intense.

"How are you holding up?" Mark murmurs, low in Roger's ear, not expecting to be heard but hoping that after seven years of their shared residence, Roger has picked up on Mark's signature questions and knows when they will be asked.

Roger nods gruffly, downing another shot. He says not a word, and Mark knows that it is because he is so engrossed in all his thoughts that he can't help but be silent. Mark, however, is overcome with curiosity, and tentatively asks, "What are you thinking about?"

His expression mild and curious, Roger sizes Mark up briefly. After several moments, he at last beckons that Mark follow him to the door. Mark shrugs and gets to his feet, gathers his belongings, and follows Roger to the exit. The bartender watches them longingly as they go, either hoping to join them in some sort of sexual activity or to merely escape his confines of the loud, smoky hellhole called The Village Pourhouse. Mark snickers every time he hears the name, wanting to know what he can buy of worth there other than cheap drinks. Then again, cheap drinks are so like that which would be purhcased at an actual whorehouse – a brief resolution to all of one's troubles, then a tense morning-after and a blossoming headache long after the coffeepot has been emptied.

Wanting to distract himself from his deep pondering about prostitutes and alcohol, Mark asks again, "What are you thinking about?" He sinks down beside Roger against the wall of the building. The bar's exit is in the back of the building, hence Mark and Roger's location, which is between the Ale House building and the building on the other side of the street. They have maybe three feet between the two buildings, and it just so happens that the other building is the Cat Scratch Club.

Mark wonders if irony is stalking him.

As though hearing this question for the first time, Roger opens his mouth to answer and then closes it again. Mark fixes him with a dramatically loathsome glare, demanding to know why Roger dragged him away from the _booze _just so they could look at the ground, lean against the wall, and not talk about what Mark had asked in the first place. It is blatantly unfair, and it is three-seventeen in the morning. This should not happen. Nothing this spontaneous should ever happen.

Spontaneity, however, seems to be the theme of the night, and Mark decides to go for it.

"_What are you thinking about_?" he asks again, this time with his eyes comically wide and his mouth slightly ajar as he finishes the statement, looking like, more than anything else, his eighteen-year-old self upon his initial arrival in New York for the first time.

Roger snickers, obviously remembering Mark's "former self." At last, after giving Mark a long gaze, Roger sighs. "April," he says.

"April?" Mark demands. It has been four years now, and two since Mimi. Well. "Since" Mimi seems too final. No. She isn't dead or dying, just _otherwise occupied_. With Benny. April, on the other hand… has not been mentioned in at least a year. Perhaps more.

With a curt nod, Roger explains, "She died today. Four years ago today. Do you know what we were doing four years ago today?"

Reflexively, Mark replies, so quickly that it is almost comical, "Cleaning up blood with sponges Maureen used for her protest the next month."

Roger surveys Mark in admiration. "How the fuck do you remember this shit?" he growls, but he remembers it too. Mark knows that, because how could he forget? The day of one's girlfriend's suicide is not a day that one has difficulty recalling. It is a day that stands out in the reel of tragic events in one's life, along with birth and death and one's first hangover. And, in Mark's case, being dumped for a woman with a six-figure salary.

Mark sighs. "Why are you thinking about April?" he asks, because while Roger is noisy and communicative when drunk, he is still _Roger _enough to be naturally opposed to discussions about sore subjects. It isn't too hard to drag the beginning out of him, but it still has to be done.

"'Cause," says Roger. "Like I said, she died today. Um. A few years back."

Although he feels ridiculous, rather like Paul on a day with a new person in the group, Mark asks, "Is that all?"

"No," says Roger bluntly, expanding with, "of course not." When Mark continues to look at him curiously, Roger sighs deeply. "Okay," he says at last. "So you know, with April, I was, like, twenty-one and I felt kind of… kind of…"

"Invincible," supplies Mark, who absolutely does not know the feeling but can pretend he does.

Roger nods. "Yeah. Exactly." He gulps before continuing. "And… she let me feel that, you know? We had drugs and needles and booze and music and lust and sex and everything. Everything except the _rent_, you know, and we didn't care about that. It was just pleasure. And we had all that. Anything we could ever _want_."

Mark remembers this vividly. He remembers Roger, twenty-one and new to the world of one who did not have to go to church on Sundays and repent for having sex but never actually refraining from doing it. Mark himself, younger but _older _at the same time, looked on through his camera lens from the sidelines. It was terrifying, but as a newcomer to that world, he was left to think that it happened to everyone. He wondered when it would happen to him.

"Right," says Mark, because he wants Roger to continue.

Roger does. "And… we never thought we were in love. We weren't. You know, it was passion, and she was nineteen and I was – "

"She was nineteen?" Mark asks, and now he isn't Paul anymore, now he is a girl trying to hook up with Roger and feign interest in his personal crises until he develops enough interest in _her _to actually pay attention to her.

Mark shudders. Where did _that _come from?

"Yeah, she was nineteen," Roger mumbles. "Like Mimi, but… well, she seemed older."

"She seemed _younger_," Mark corrects him.

"No, she didn't," Roger says decisively, and turns away to stare back at his feet. "Well… anyway, she was nineteen and I was twenty-one, and we just needed something exciting. So we had each other. But we weren't in love." He waits a long moment, obviously weighing something in his mind. After twenty or so seconds, he exhales and continues. "Then… there were hookups. One-night stands and all that. Even a whore." When Mark opens his mouth to say that he doesn't remember a _whore_, Roger cuts him off hurriedly. "And that was… desperation, I guess. Then there was Mimi, and that was a crush. High school. A crush."

His head shaking, Mark insists, "You loved her."

"I did," Roger admits, "but more than that, I loved her philosophy. I _hated _it, I disagreed with it, but it saved my life and it made me open my eyes and all that self-redemption shit." He looks knowingly at Mark. "And… I hated so much about her, I hated it and I loved it. But… you know me," he says, sounding embarrassed. "I'm just… I'm not…"

Mark saves him. "You let your anger get the better of you."

"Yes," Roger agrees. "Yes, yes, yes. So… when she was passionate and fiery and outgoing, I just saw her being flirty with other guys, slutty, and too hopeful. We never worked. You know we never worked. We just weren't… we didn't fit together, you know?"

Mark nods. He knows. He knows all too well what it is to love someone, love them so much it hurts, and have it just _not work_, like pieces of a puzzle smashing together again and again and never quite fitting.

Ever.

If you chip a piece off a tiny _piece_ of a puzzle piece, though…

"So," Roger continues, "that's my love life, in a nutshell. Nothing before April, nothing after Mimi. That's it. Kind of pathetic, isn't it?" He does not let Mark answer. "I feel like Collins, where I've had a fleeting chance at love and it just – "

Mark closes his eyes, keeps them closed for several seconds, and opens them.

And the world is lighter, only slightly but still _lighter_. A tiny sliver of color is poking its way through the sky, prodding its way through a tiny opening. _It's my turn_, it is insisting. _Darkness is over. It's daytime, now_. It is five now, and those very same businessmen that were frolicking in bars mere hours before are to be woken up in an hour or perhaps two.

" – expired," Roger is saying again and again. "Expired, expired, expired. Ended. Over. Caput. The end. So now I'm back to square one, trying to fall in love with things again instead of people."

Mark raises an eyebrow, because the earlier it gets, the more incoherent Roger seems. "Things?" he repeats.

"Yeah," says Roger. "Every song I write, I get all gushy over it and start saying 'Oh, it's the best one I've ever written.' And every fucking new drink I try in a bar, I say it's my new favorite. I want something to fill the gap Mimi left."

"She left two years ago," Mark points out.

Roger grins darkly. "And how many nights since then have I hooked up?"

Mark cannot think of an eloquent way to say "every single fucking one," so he says nothing at all. He knows what Roger is thinking, and he knows that Roger knows what _he _is thinking.

"What are you gonna do about it, then?" Mark asks, and wonders how the hell he got to discussing Roger's love life problems when he himself hasn't had sex in four years, way back then when Maureen was straight like every other hot girl in the fucking city.

Roger shrugs. "I don't want to pursue someone again," he admits, sounding almost shy. Nervous, even. "But I don't know if I can live my life alone."

"You have a best friend," Mark points out, and hopes he does not sound as nagging to Roger as he does in his own mind. "I'm here for you," he adds, and at least now he sounds cliché instead of just plain ridiculous.

With a loud sigh, Roger mutters, "You know what I meant."

"I'm _here _for you, though," Mark repeats, and leans over to kiss Roger firmly on the mouth.

Roger pulls back. "You're drunk," he says, "and you kiss worse than April ever did, which was pretty damn bad." He is remarkably calm about the whole thing, unsurprised and expressionless. "Do you want me to carry you home? You're as light as… well, as Mimi, I guess."

Mark shakes his head, wrestling free from Roger's grip on his shoulder. "I can walk on my own, thanks," he snarls.

"Hey," says Roger. "Hey, hey." Without waiting for permission, he scoops Mark effortlessly into his own arms and begins the journey to the loft. Mark squirms, deeply embarrassed to be slung over Roger's shoulder but also somewhat comforted. After several minutes, he calms down, hanging loosely and, god, he is so exhausted. He is asleep before they reach the top of the stairs, and Roger lays him down gently on the bed.

"I don't love you," Roger says softly to his unconscious roommate, "_that _way. And I couldn't do that to you anyway." Drunk as he is, he lets every word spill from his mouth, uncensored. "Besides, Mark," he adds, "you were drunk."

Even in the throes of intoxication, Roger cannot recognize his own condition. Yet, as Mark finds himself thinking so often, a serene drunk is a thoughtless one, and if Roger can find himself without any worries and self-consciousness, well, good for him.

He, at least, can enjoy the last few remaining moments of his Wednesday night before dawn blooms and another headache blossoms.

While Mark is not so lucky, chances are, he will awake to the smell of coffee and the sneaking yet unconfirmed suspicion that something happened last night that bears no consequence whatsoever and is not to be discussed ever again.

That's fine, though, because that rule will be forgotten the very next time both roommates are drunk anyway. After all, it's not as though they will remember it in the morning.


End file.
